Column

Jenna Coleman plays Queen Victoria in the PBS series, "Victoria," returning for a third season on Sunday.

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True Detective. Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Green Book) stars in the third, and so far my favorite, installment of Nic Pizzolatto’s anthology series, which kicks off with two back-to-back episodes. Ali plays a retired detective with memory issues who’s asked to look back at the biggest case of his career for a true-crime documentary. Stephen Dorff plays his partner on the case and Carmen Ejogo (Selma) his wife, a schoolteacher and writer, in a story told over three different periods in their lives. 9 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 13, HBO.

Victoria on Masterpiece. Jenna Coleman returns for a third season as the still-young (and again pregnant) queen, for whom the revolutions of 1848 pose challenges both personal and professional. Monarchies are toppling across Europe, sending some of her relatives fleeing and fueling sentiment in Britain against the status quo. We also meet the queen’s half-sister, Princess Feodora (Kate Fleetwood), who’s a real piece of work. 9 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 13, WHYY12.

Valley of the Boom. Remember Netscape? Halt and Catch Fire meets The Big Short in this docudrama about the internet boom of the 1990s that uses a variety of comic devices to explain things like the browser wars. Stars include Bradley Whitford, Lamorne Morris, and Steve Zahn. 9 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 13, National Geographic Channel.

The Passage. Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Saniyya Sidney (Hidden Figures) star as a federal agent and the young girl he bonds with after he’s sent to kidnap her in a Ridley Scott-produced thriller. Fans of the best-selling Justin Cronin trilogy about a secret medical experiment that goes very, very wrong could be justifiably skeptical of any network’s ability to pull off a story this sprawling, but Liz Heldens' adaptation, which reimagines some major characters, makes good use of the chemistry between Gosselaar and Sidney. 9 p.m. Monday, Jan. 14, Fox.

Roswell, New Mexico. Less a reboot of the old WB/UPN teen drama Roswell than a new adaptation of Melinda Metz’s young-adult novel series Roswell High, the new, slightly more adult version stars Jeanine Mason as Liz Ortecho, a biomedical researcher who returns to her UFO-mad hometown 10 years after her sister’s death. There she discovers that Max (Nathan Dean Parsons), the guy she liked in high school, is a policeman now — and, oh, by the way, he’s also an extraterrestrial, one of three in town. There’s a murder mystery as well as an immigration story line (Liz’s father is undocumented) that pairs well with the story of the show’s trio of outsiders trying to hide in plain sight. 9 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 15, CW.

Deadly Class. Set in 1980s San Francisco, this drama based on a best-selling graphic novel stars Benjamin Wadsworth as Marcus, an orphaned, homeless teen who’s recruited into a private school where crime lords send their children, apparently to learn the family business, and the headmaster, Master Lin (Benedict Wong), believes that “some people deserve to die.” Let’s just say this place makes Hogwarts look like a nursery school. 10 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 16, Syfy.

Grace and Frankie. The fifth season of the all-star comedy cocreated by Broomall’s Marta Kauffman (Friends) picks up with Grace (Jane Fonda) and Frankie (Lily Tomlin) still between the retirement home they fled and the beach house their children sold out from under them. Meanwhile, their two exes (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) are caught by their children in a particularly awkward situation. RuPaul guest-stars. Friday, Jan. 18, Netflix.

Brexit. “Everyone knows who won, but not everyone knows how,” says Benedict Cumberbatch’s character, Dominic Cummings, in the opening moments of this film, which has already ignited controversy in Britain. Cummings led the campaign in 2016 to have the United Kingdom leave the European Union, though the actual exit is still very much in the air as the deadline approaches. (Think of making a film about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation before it’s over.) Written by James Graham, whose excellent play about Rupert Murdoch, Ink, is to come to Broadway this year, it’s an incisive, if dispiriting, look at what now goes into selling voters — including those who usually sit out elections — starting with their Facebook pages. 9 p.m. Saturday, HBO.